I'm developing a custom UserControl to inject JQuery hotkeys into a page declaratively on the server side. Here's the control (the important parts anyway):

[AspNetHostingPermission(SecurityAction.Demand, Level = AspNetHostingPermissionLevel.Minimal),
   AspNetHostingPermission(SecurityAction.InheritanceDemand, Level = AspNetHostingPermissionLevel.Minimal),
   DefaultProperty("HotKeys"),
   ParseChildren(true, "HotKeys"),
   ToolboxData("<{0}:HotKeysControl runat=\"server\"> </{0}:HotKeysControl>")]
public partial class HotKeysControl : System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebControl
{
    private string crlf = Environment.NewLine;
    public List<HotKey> _HotKeys;

    public HotKeysControl()
    {
        if (_HotKeys == null)
        {
            _HotKeys = new List<HotKey>();
        }
        // if I uncomment this line, script is injected into the page
        // _HotKeys.Add(new HotKey("ctrl+r","thisControl"));
    }

    [
        Category("Behavior"),
        Description("The hotkeys collection"),
        DesignerSerializationVisibility(
            DesignerSerializationVisibility.Content),
        Editor(typeof(HotKeyCollectionEditor), typeof(UITypeEditor)),
        PersistenceMode(PersistenceMode.InnerDefaultProperty)
     ]
    public List<HotKey> HotKeys
    {
        set { _HotKeys = value; }
        get { return _HotKeys; }
    }

Here's the .aspx code:

<%@ Register Assembly="MyCompany.ProductName.WebControls" Namespace="MyCompany.ProductName.WebControls" TagPrefix="uc" %>

...

<uc:HotKeysControl ID="theHotkeys" runat="server" Visible="false">
<uc:HotKey ControlName="firstControl" KeyCode="ctrl+1" />
<uc:HotKey ControlName="thirdControl" KeyCode="ctrl+2" />
</uc:HotKeysControl>

Nothing happens, as if no HotKeys objects are being added to the property collection. What Am I doing wrong? If I uncomment out the line above and "manually" add items, it works. It's something about how I'm declaratively adding hotkeys to the page.

Any ideas?